A Simple Misunderstanding
by Platinum Trickster
Summary: Remember when Ofelia met the Pale Man, that monster who tried to eat her? Well, what if it was all just a misunderstanding?


**A/N: I randomly thought of this when I was plotting my other Pan's Labyrinth fic, which should be up once I see the movie again. Until then, here's a humorous story about the Pale Man and Ofelia/Moanna.**

**By the way, try to imagine Doug Jones' [he played the Pale Man] voice when the Pale Man is speaking.**

**Enjoy!**

**Also, just as a warning: possibly crappy story is possibly crappy. I wrote this in half an hour, so...**

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><p>Princess Moanna had finally returned to her parents, the rulers of the underworld. They were overjoyed to see their daughter again, and requested that she tell them about how she returned to them.<p>

The princess told her parents of how she had come back to them, from when she had first met the faun, to the tall, strange monster that had almost eaten her when she went to retrieve the ornate dagger, to her death at the hands of her step-father. The king frowned. "A tall, strange monster that had tried to eat you, you say," he muttered.

Moanna nodded. "That's right," she said.

"Did he have eyes in his hands?"

She nodded again. The king paused to think. "That monster you saw is called the Pale Man. He is one of my servants used in the tasks for the mortal girl suspected to be my reincarnated daughter." he explained to her. "His task was to devour anyone who was not actually the reincarnation. The Pale Man could tell it was the wrong person by sensing if they did not match the aura of me and your mother."

The princess cocked her head to the side, slightly confused. "He didn't attack me for that," she said. "He attacked me because I ate the food on the table."

The king was just as confused. "That's odd," he said. "I need to ask the Pale Man. He needs to explain what happened." He ordered the faun go out and retrieve the Pale Man from where he had been placed thousands of years before.

When the Pale Man and the faun returned, Moanna stepped back a few steps, frightened by seeing the monster that had almost eaten her. He made the same ungodly noise as he had when they had last met. It turned into a cough. "Could someone give me a glass of water?" the monster asked. "My throat is _really_ dry."

"Y-You can talk," Moanna muttered.

"Of course I can," replied the Pale Man. "Why would you think I couldn't, princess?"

The princess made a few steps toward the monster. "Well, when I saw you in that room with the food and dagger, you only made that creepy-"

The monster cut her off. "Wait, when was that?" the Pale Man asked. "I don't remember seeing you, princess."

"You don't remember? I ate two grapes off your table, you woke up, killed two of the fairies I was with, and then tried to eat me." she reminded him.

The Pale Man did not answer immediately. He slowly said, "Oh, you were that little girl. Well, jeez, I almost ate the princess." He laughed. "Boy would that have been stupid, huh?" His laughs grew louder.

Moanna stared at the monster. "I have another question, Pale Man." the princess told him, pulling his attention back to her.

"Go ahead, princess." the monster said, still chuckling a bit.

"Why did you attack me when I ate that food on the table? Father told me that you only attacked people because their auras didn't match the king and queen's."

The Pale Man stopped to think. "Oh! I remember! See, after the king assigned me to one of the tasks to find his daughter after she'd been reincarnated, I didn't think it'd take that long. I was really excited to see you again so I made a nice feast for you and me when you would arrive. While I waited, I must've fallen asleep. I was having this weird nightmare, so I woke up. That happened to be the time you had eaten two of my grapes."

"But, the faun said not to eat any of the food. Why did he do that?" Moanna asked.

The Pale Man replied, "Oh, that? I seem the recall that he had visited me after a while to see how I was doing, and he saw all that food. He asked if he could have some and I said 'Get your own dang food'. Maybe he thought it was for me only and thought if you tried to eat my food, you'd get in trouble. That wasn't the case, as I explained earlier.

"Now I'm going to continue on with what happened when I woke up from my weird nightmare. I heard some noises so I put in my eyes to see who it was. My eyesight was kind of fuzzy because I'd been alseep so long, so I couldn't make out who it was. Your fairies started distracting me, and that's when I realized I was really hungry, so I ate them as a quick snack. I was trying to catch up with you to see who you were but you kept running and my walking was a little screwy because I was so brittle from not eating and because I hadn't moved in a lot of years." he explained.

"What about that strange sound you were making?" she asked.

"Oh, that. See, my throat was incredibly dry for not drinking for a long time, so that's the most intelligible sound I could make. I was trying to tell you to stop but it didn't come out right." the Pale Man replied.

Moanna sighed. "And I suppose you have a reason for having those drawings of you eating children on the ceiling?"

The monster nodded. "While I was waiting, I was really bored so I drew some pictures." he said. "I think I'm a pretty good artist."

The king smiled. "See, dear? There's an explanation for everything."

Moanna did not answer. She did not agree with her father, nor did she say anything to the Pale Man. All she did was facepalm.

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><p><strong>AN: THE END.**

**This is so ridiculous. It makes sense, though, how the Pale Man is actually nice because I can't take him seriously at the result of the interview with Doug Jones [is he related to Alfred F. Jones? Hats off to you if you get the reference.] while he was in the Pale Man costume.**

**Thanks for reading, everyone!**


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